Current methods for setting white point or white balance for managing color accuracy in televisions with LCD display panels falls into a somewhat acceptable category. Circuitry for attempting to maintain color balance with current LCD televisions requires additional electronic components and power usage to run the circuitry which falls short at providing dynamic white point balance.
White point balance or color balance on televisions relates to color temperature. Color temperature is a characteristic of visible light that has important applications in lighting, photography, videography, publishing, manufacturing, astrophysics, horticulture, and other fields. The color temperature of a light source is the temperature of an ideal black body radiator that radiates light of comparable hue or color to that of the light source. In practice, color temperature is only meaningful for light sources that do in fact correspond somewhat closely to the radiation of some black body, i.e. those on a line from reddish/orange via yellow and more or less white to blueish white. Color temperature is conventionally expressed in degrees of Kelvin.
Color temperatures over 5,000K are called cool colors (blueish white), while lower color temperatures (2,700-3,000 K) are called warm colors (yellowish white through red).
NTSC and PAL TV norms call for a compliant TV screen to display an electrically black and white signal (minimal color saturation) at a color temperature of 6,500 K. Consumer-grade televisions noticeable deviate from this standard. Higher-end consumer-grade televisions generally have their color temperatures adjusted to 6,500 K by using a preprogrammed setting or a custom calibration. This setting is generally set at the factory. Some televisions will also have different preset points customized for retail display, normal, games, sports, etc.
Retail television modes have color temperatures that are higher around 11,000 Kelvin which puts the temperature into blue hues. The side effect of this is to make the picture appear brighter in high light environments which are typical in retail settings.
Current versions of ATSC explicitly call for the color temperature data to be included in the data stream, but old versions of ATSC allowed this data to be omitted. In this case, current versions of ATSC cite default colorimetry standards depending on the format. Both of the cited standards specify a 6,500 K color temperature.
Current digital LCD televisions use complicated circuitry to set color balance. This is generally accomplished by increasing or decreasing the base drive level to the red and blue sub-pixels with a pixel group. Considering that a 1080p television screen has a total of 2,073,600 pixel groups with three times that many sub-pixels (each pixel group has 3 pixels that converts white light to red, blue and green). Eliminating the calculations required to keep the blue and red pixels at some minimum level can result in savings in component counts, PCB traces and power required to run the circuitry.